Disturbing the Black Hole

Abstract

I describe some examples in support of the conjecture that the horizon area of a near equilibrium black hole is an adiabatic invariant. These include a Schwarzschild black hole perturbed by quasistatic scalar fields (which may be minimally or nonminimally coupled to curvature), a Kerr black under the influence of scalar radiation at the superradiance treshold, and a Reissner--Nordström black hole absorbing a charge marginally. These clarify somewhat the conditions under which the conjecture would be true. The desired ``adiabatic theorem'' provides an important motivation for a scheme for black hole quantization.